1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to antenna arrays and more specifically to wideband antenna arrays configured to provide increased performance over a wide operating spectrum.
2. Description of Related Art
Directive antenna systems generally fall into two categories, single directive antennas and antenna arrays. For applications including large operating spectrums, single directive antennas are sometimes preferable to arrays because the performance of a typical array degrades as the size of the operating spectrum increases. For aircraft applications, however, single directive antennas are sometimes impractical due to their comparatively large size and weight, and due to the need to raise or lower the antenna from the airframe when it is in use to enable mechanical scanning. For all applications single directive antennas also have the added drawback that they can only “see” in one direction at a time and they are limited in the rate at which they can steer the beam to new locations. If a malicious (jamming) signal is detected, a single directive antenna must then avoid scanning in the area of the malicious signal altogether.